Who can have hoped to have done this without burdensome Government regulations which are a nuisance to everyone—­including those who have the thankless task of administering them?

We all know that there have been mistakes—­mistakes due to the inevitable process of trial and error inherent in doing big things for the first time.  We all know that there have been too many complicated forms and questionnaires.  I know about that.  I have had to fill some of them out myself.

But we are determined to see to it that our supplies of food and other essential civilian goods are distributed on a fair and just basis—­to rich and poor, management and labor, farmer and city dweller alike.  We are determined to keep the cost of living at a stable level.  All this has required much information.  These forms and questionnaires represent an honest and sincere attempt by honest and sincere officials to obtain this information.

We have learned by the mistakes that we have made.

Our experience will enable us during the coming year to improve the necessary mechanisms of wartime economic controls, and to simplify administrative procedures.  But we do not intend to leave things so lax that loopholes will be left for cheaters, for chiselers, or for the manipulators of the black market.

Of course, there have been disturbances and inconveniences—­and even hardships.  And there will be many, many more before we finally win.  Yes, 1943 will not be an easy year for us on the home front.  We shall feel in many ways in our daily lives the sharp pinch of total war.

Fortunately, there are only a few Americans who place appetite above patriotism.  The overwhelming majority realize that the food we send abroad is for essential military purposes, for our own and Allied fighting forces, and for necessary help in areas that we occupy.

We Americans intend to do this great job together.  In our common labors we must build and fortify the very foundation of national unity—­confidence in one another.

It is often amusing, and it is sometimes politically profitable, to picture the City of Washington as a madhouse, with the Congress and the Administration disrupted with confusion and indecision and general incompetence.

However—­what matters most in war is results.  And the one pertinent fact is that after only a few years of preparation and only one year of warfare, we are able to engage, spiritually as well as physically, in the total waging of a total war.

Washington may be a madhouse—­but only in the sense that it is the Capital City of a Nation which is fighting mad.  And I think that Berlin and Rome and Tokyo, which had such contempt for the obsolete methods of democracy, would now gladly use all they could get of that same brand of madness.

And we must not forget that our achievements in production have been relatively no greater than those of the Russians and the British and the Chinese who have developed their own war industries under the incredible difficulties of battle conditions.  They have had to continue work through bombings and blackouts.  And they have never quit.